Get a 30% bonus when you buy Virgin Flying Club miles – good deal?

Links on Head for Points may pay us an affiliate commission. A list of partners is here.

Yesterday we covered the new Virgin Flying Club redemption promotion. You can get a 30% discount on the number of miles required to redeem for selected destinations this Summer.

There is a second part to this offer

Virgin is also offering a 30% bonus when you buy Virgin Flying Club miles.

The link to buy, transfer or gift miles is here. However there is NO bonus for gifting or transferring miles – only for buying them for yourself. MilesBooster is not included either.

The closing date for the bonus is 19th June.

Virgin now allows you buy to a whopping 100,000 miles per year (130,000 under this offer) at an equally whopping cost of £1,515!

Is this a good deal?

As usual with these cases, the answer is “not really, unless you want to do an immediate redemption”.

To buy 20,000 miles, for example, comes out at £315. With the 30% bonus, you would actually receive 26,000 miles. This works out at 1.21p. Even at the 100,000 mile level you are paying 1.16p per mile.

You would struggle to get good value if you bought all of the miles you needed for a redemption at that price but of course topping up an account is a different matter.

If you are just a few thousand miles short of what you need for a redemption you are planning, this could be a way of picking them up more cheaply than you otherwise could.

Even then, though, look at your other options.

Even if you need the miles instantly, you have options. Transfers from American Express Membership Rewards are instant as long as your accounts are already linked.

If you need the miles within 24-48 hours, a transfer of Tesco Clubcard points may be a better deal.

If you need the miles within a week or so, a transfer of Heathrow Rewards points or hotel loyalty points may do the trick.

And, if you’re not in a hurry, you can get 20,000 Virgin Flying Club miles if you convert the sign-up bonus for the (free in the first year) American Express Gold credit card (review). This will post as soon as you have spent £2,000.

If you need the miles more quickly, the 5,000 miles for getting the new Virgin Flying Club Reward credit card (review) will be triggered after your first purchase and are arriving fairly quickly. The £160 Reward+ card (review) has a higher bonus of 15,000 miles.

In general, it isn’t easy to get a lot more than 1.2p of value (if you are realistic about the value of your ‘free’ redemption flight) from any airline mile and you shouldn’t be paying 1.2p for them unless you have a definite plan.

How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, one has a bonus of 15,000 points):

Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard

The UK’s most generous free Visa or Mastercard at 0.75 points / £1 Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 points bonus and the most generous non-Amex for day to day spending Read our full review

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 30,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 30,000 Virgin Points:

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points.

(Want to earn more Virgin Points? Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)

Category

Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Jammy Dodger says:

9 Jun9 June 03:54

Waste of money.
I buy the cheapest economy ticket & slip the check-in staff £50 & upgraded to Upperclass with Clubhouse access.
- Nicholas Shaw says:
  
  9 Jun9 June 07:01
  
  No you don’t
- ChrisC says:
  
  9 Jun9 June 08:56
  
  Why do people post such rubbish? It’s notclever or funny.
  
  These days upgrades are decided by algorithms in advance and staff have little control over them.
  
  No employee is going to risk their job over £50 quid.
Devin says:

9 Jun9 June 07:32

Doesn’t anyone have insight into whether VS will eventually expand its network, or stay pretty much as-is with main focus on NA?
- Devin says:
  
  9 Jun9 June 07:32
  
  *does
- the real harry1 says:
  
  9 Jun9 June 09:27
  
  Sure, it has been announced that there will be integration fairly soon between VS and FB, so we’ll get all the possibilities that using KLM and AF offer, including redeeming Virgin miles to fly short haul in Europe.
  
  Don’t get your hopes up too much – regular FB redemptions in Europe seem rather expensive to my eye and I doubt whether Virging joining up with Flying Blue will change the points requirement. The real attraction might lie in using Virgin miles on the regular FB promotions, eg recently there were heavily discounted redemptions (up to 50% off) on flights to USA etc.
  - the_real_a says:
    
    9 Jun9 June 13:26
    
    The tax element is VERY expensive indeed. To the point of making it useless, especially if you live in the regions and have low cost operators out of your local airport. There are few direct flights unless you want to go to Amsterdam or Paris so you are hit with full airport taxes for two airports (change of planes at the hubs). ONE way taxes are between £50 and £70 short haul economy on the routes i was looking at.
  - David says:
    
    10 Jun10 June 01:04
    
    eh?
    
    “The real attraction might lie in using Virgin miles on the regular FB promotions, eg recently there were heavily discounted redemptions (up to 50% off) on flights to USA etc.”
    
    Why are you expecting to get access to that? Unless I’ve missed something nobody has mentioned FlyingClub joining FlyingBlue. All that is expected (again unless I’ve missed something) is the ability to earn and redeem on AF/KLM.
    
    Nor (again unless I’ve missed something) is anyone expecting anykind of miles transfer to be possible.
    
    What you are talking about above would be equivalent to Lufthansa M&M having a points redemption sale/promo on certain routes and expecting to get a cheaper redemption when redeming (say) Krisflyer miles on the same route. Which obviouslyis not going to happen.
Jovanna says:

9 Jun9 June 09:07

My Avis / Virgin bonus points failed to credit again. In February I put it down to not following the link – not that there were instructions to do so. Last month, I followed the link but still only awarded 500 miles. No sign of the 5000 bonus. Webpage isn’t much help in claiming. Group C, 4 day rental etc. Given up on these type of promotions now.
- Catalan says:
  
  9 Jun9 June 10:27
  
  Virgin Wines are exactly the same. I’m still missing two sets of 750 Flying Club miles after orders made last year and this February.
  - the real harry1 says:
    
    9 Jun9 June 14:07
    
    Just claim them online with your purchase details & they’ll get awarded straight away
- palcsaky says:
  
  9 Jun9 June 11:02
  
  I also only got the 500 base miles. Comments on flyertalk suggest it takes 2-3 months for the bonus miles to post automatically. I will probably wait before chasing up.
  - Leo says:
    
    9 Jun9 June 12:15
    
    My two full awards posted within a week or so of the actual bookings – no issue either time, used the link both occasions. I chalk this up to luck more than anything else. Some you win etc. and Virgin seem remarkably flaky. I’m not being smug here as I half expect Virgin to scoop back the points at some later date.
William PH says:

9 Jun9 June 22:51

I’ve been flying with Delta a bit over the last year and crediting the flights to VS. Looking at the taxes on redemptions I worry that I should have been joining Delta Sky Miles and posting there- but so many people refer to them scornfully as Sky Pesos. My main interest is LHR SEA flights. Should I stick with Flying Club or move to Delta??
Rob says:

9 Jun9 June 23:30

Delta is already a full Virgin partner. KLM / AF will become Flying Club redemption partners and you will also be able to earn FC tier points when you fly them.
Henry Young says:

10 Jun10 June 16:31

The best value redemption is off peak one way Prem Eco HKG->LHR. Last time I ran the numbers a couple of months ago it works out at 4.6p per point. This is helped a lot by fuel surcharges not being permitted until HK law. The only downer is that VS closed their pretty good HKG lounge last year. Maintaining a branded un-shared lounge for one flight per day did seem rather profligate. The generic lounges at HKG are often rammed. I just worry that HKG may get dropped from the VS network. Anyone have any insight into this ?
- Rob says:
  
  10 Jun10 June 16:57
  
  VS will be doing a lot of expansion. The Air Berlin planes they borrowed temporarily to cover for the 787s are getting a £10m refit, will be around for at least 4 years and – assuming the A350 are on time – will give them an extra fillip of capacity once the 787 issue is sorted.
geoffthesaint says:

16 Jun16 June 19:01

How do you see a points per purchase break down in the Virgin flying club or Virgin Credit card like we do with Amex or B.A?
I only see the total per month once per month.

Thanks
Geoff